How to Build Your Online Presence, Pt. 4: Optimize Your Website for Success

Building a website and simply “being online” is not enough if you want to grow your business and brand awareness. You need to make sure that your website is optimized so that it supports your marketing and business activities.

Here are a few things to consider when creating a website to ensure maximum optimization.

SEO is Still Important

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is still important and should definitely be a part of your site optimization process. There are many online tutorials and tools to help you with your keyword research and to choose the keywords that you should target. Ideally, it is best to hire an SEO expert to help you out at this stage.

There are two main types of SEO optimizations you need to consider:

Content

When writing your content, try to include main keywords in the body of the post and headers. While this step is important, it should only be done if it does not harm the clarity and quality of your content.

Search Engine Results

To increase organic traffic, it isn’t enough to just appear in search results, you need to make your content appealing enough to get people to click through. This is done by optimizing your title and description for search engine page results. If you’re using a site builder, see if you can add this feature as a plugin (like Yoast on WordPress) or if this feature is available as part of the main site builder.

Social Sharing

Social features have become a must for any website these days, especially if you are active on social media and have a blog.

Social features to consider are:

Icons in your header or footer that link to your different social profiles. Remember to have the links open in new page so that you don’t take them out of your website.

Like and follow buttons to your social profiles to increase your following.

Share buttons on all blog posts at the top and bottom of each post to make it easier for your readers to share your content. You can also add a hovering share bar in many site builders.

Social feeds – especially if you have very visual posts related to food, beauty, or fashion. This can also be relevant for companies and businesses that are attending a tradeshow – you can add a social feed during the trade show to share images and updates from the event.

Remember – you want to make it as easy as possible to get your visitors to follow you and share your content. This will increase your brand exposure and organic traffic.

Strong Messages

Don’t spend only a few minutes writing the content on your website. You need to work with a professional copywriter to ensure that you have a consistent message throughout your different channels and that your content is clear and enticing.

In one main slogan on your homepage header, you need to be able to convey to your visitors what benefit you’re offering them, and that isn’t easy without experience. Every piece of content on your site should be written strategically and with your main goals in mind.

Clear Visuals

A great-looking design is always nice to look at and show off, but you need to make sure it supports your message and goals. Don’t let your design distract your visitors from your content and call-to-action. Make sure to avoid clutter and to have a professional design that is easy for visitors to navigate and understand.

Define Your Conversion Funnel

You need to have a clear and defined conversion funnel for your site so that you can optimize each step within the funnel. A conversion funnel defines the different steps you want your users to take from the moment they visit your site to the moment they leave, and can also include steps outside of your website. Here is an example:

Step 1: User visits homepage – The main objective is to get them to click the call-to-action button in the header that invites them to read more about the flagship product.

Step 2: User is on the main product page – The main objective is to get them to click the CTA button to purchase the product.

Step 3: User is in the shopping cart – The main objective is to get them to enter their information and payment details and complete the purchase.

Each step of the way, you need to think how you can create the design and content on the page to increase the chances that the user moves on to the next step. By defining a clear conversion funnel, you can track each step and discover optimization opportunities and faults.

Make Things Easy

Always remember to make things easy for your users and visitors. This includes making navigation easy to understand so that your visitors can quickly see how to contact you, sign up, or read more about your company. It also means ensuring that your site is as fast as possible and doesn’t lag, because no one has the patience to wait for a page to load these days!

A/B Testing

In the end, the best way to discover where you should optimize your content or design is to do A/B Testing. If you’re using a site builder, make sure they have A/B testing features or plugins. A/B testing is done by creating two versions of the same page, or step in your funnel, and dividing your traffic randomly between both versions. This will help you see which version works best and why and you can continue to make changes and test out each change along the way.

Good luck!